Brigadier General Vladimir Vauhnik: Famous Slovenian/Yugoslav Operative

Vladimir Vauhnik, first colonel and then brigadier general in the army of Kingdom of Yugoslavia, is an important and yet almost forgotten figure of the Second World War; his efforts might have changed the course of the war for the better. Prior to and during the Second World War, Vauhnik was Yugoslavia’s military attaché to Berlin, where he spied on Germans. He used covert and legal methods to obtain information on the basis of which he was probably the first in the world to determine that Nazi Germany would invade Poland, and later, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The chapter presents a section from Vauhnik’s autobiography, in particular the difficulties caused by Vauhnik’s intelligence and counterintelligence activities to the German counterintelligence and the Gestapo, which was run by Vauhnik’s ‘nemesis’, Walter Schellenberg. Vauhnik was successful in evading the Germans, but was eventually put under surveillance and then arrested together with other Yugoslav intelligence operatives in Germany and occupied territories, following Hitler’s orders.

Keywords: Berlin, Counterintelligence, Diplomacy, Espionage, Gesellschaftsspionage, Gestapo, Invasion of Yugoslavia, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Military attaché, Military intelligence, Nazi Germany, Vladimir Vauhnik, Walter Schellenberg.